Ashes to Ashes, Dust to....Plastination?

The skin and outer tissues have been removed to reveal the insides of the human body: bones, organs, muscle. They're posed in a variety of positions, like pitching a baseball, swinging a bat, falling backward to kick a soccer ball, sitting head-in-hand like Rodin's Thinker, throwing a discus, dancing or walking with a cane. One rides a bicycle. Often half the cranium has been removed to show a cross section of the brain. To illustrate MRI's, one was cut into 165 half inch thick slices separated by spaces that probably quintupled the specimen's original height. The eyes have been replaced with prosthetic eyeballs that seem to be looking at you.

Billed as an educational exhibit, Bodies Revealed presents brief and interesting facts. But despite the informational trappings, it's really a morbid curiosity fix.

These were once living, breathing people whose bodies have been preserved by replacing water and fats with liquid silicone rubber in a process called plastination. The process provides rigidity that enables the cadavers to be posed, turning them into bizarre sculptures. In years past, they would have been shown in a carnival tent and hawked by a barker or displayed in P.T. Barnum's American Museum next to the "FeeJee Mermaid," an attraction that turned out to be the upper half of a monkey sewn to the bottom half of a fish. They may yet wind up in a Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum.

I found myself looking into the eyes and wondering, "Who were you? And did you really want to end up here....like this?" After being among them for a time, the message seemed to be that they - and we - are just "stuff" that's organized into an incredible machine whose parts function in magnificent synchronization. Even so, it's just stuff with no particular humanity.

Some evolutionary scientists propose that we're machines whose spirituality is the result of brain activity. The lifelessness of the bodies, now devoid of brain function, seem to reinforce this idea. Deliberately or not, it sends a message that our essence can be distilled into inanimate material with no spiritual component, just as atheists would have us believe.

This realization makes the exhibit feel cold, callous and unenlightening.

Noticing that all the eyes looked Asian didn't help. An earlier spectator observed this and launched an investigation into the source of the bodies. When I asked a docent where they came from, she told me they were Chinese people who had donated their bodies to science and were willing to have them used for education, which the exhibit does.

Reality is more disconcerting. When Bodies Revealed was accused of using the bodies of executed Chinese prisoners, it insisted all were donated to a university by willing donors. Pressed by the State of New York, it turned out proofs of consent weren't available. A separate investigation uncovered a source that collected about one-third of its cadavers from prisons. The controversy continues.

The exhibit included plastinated human embryos at various stages of development. The embryos, lit in a way that made them translucent, hadn't provided their written consents either. But in a setting that subtly dismissed God, the unborn children quietly affirmed His presence.

In a matter of weeks, embryos become recognizably human. At 8 weeks, the formation of bones begins with each one starting in the center of its destination. For example, two tiny parallel sticks can be seen in the middle of the forearm. Over time they grow longer and finally wind up at the joints where they belong. This happens simultaneously with all of the bones. And after nine months a baby with a full, properly connected skeleton emerges.

You can believe God created fully formed man, or not. You can believe in evolution, or not. But don't pretend that divine guidance hasn't played a role in designing this process.

I didn't leave with a Bodies Revealed glowing keychain, coffee mug, scrubs, refrigerator magnet, tee shirt, magnetic message board, poster or plastic eyeballs. I left with an appreciation of God's work and an understanding of how it can be arrayed to subtly deny Him.



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